Getting started with Kunbaa
Kunbaa is a private app for your whole family — a real family tree with everyone’s place and birthday on it, and a private archive for the photos and stories worth keeping. Setting it up takes a few minutes, and everyone you invite joins free.
The first-time guides, in order
Seven short guides for a relative who has never opened the app. Each one is a few steps, with the exact buttons to tap. Follow them in order, or jump to the one you need.
- 1. Set up your family space and invite your first relative
Create your account, name your family, put yourself on the tree, and send the first invite.
- 2. Build your tree: parents, partners and children
Add the people around you one card at a time, and learn what your household and extended family mean in Kunbaa.
- 3. Share your first memory: posts, photos and who sees them
Post a photo with the names written down, and choose Everyone, Extended family or Household.
- 4. Chats, groups and calling your family
Direct lines, the family groups Kunbaa keeps for you, and a free call from the top of any chat.
- 5. Keep everyone safe: location sharing and who can see you
Share where you are for a set time or until you stop, with the relatives you pick — and nobody else.
- 6. Permissions: what admins, editors and viewers can do
The three access levels, the three switches, and how a relative asks for more.
- 7. Import an existing family tree or a WhatsApp group
Bring a GEDCOM file from another family-tree program, or the people in your WhatsApp group, onto your tree.
The short version
1. Create your account
Sign up at kunbaa.com — the mobile app is not in the App Store or Google Play yet, and your account carries over to it on the day it is. Kunbaa accounts are for adults (18 and over). Children don't get accounts — they appear in the tree and in photos, added and looked after by the adults in the family. Adults keep it; kids are in it.
2. Start your family tree
Begin with yourself, then add your parents, siblings, partner — both sides of the family, as far back and as far sideways as you like. Each relative gets their own place in the family tree, whether or not they ever create an account. If the tree already lives in another program, or the family lives in a WhatsApp group, it can be brought across instead of typed in.
3. Add your first photos
This is the part that makes Kunbaa different. Photos and stories don’t go into a pile — you write down what they are as you add them. Upload a photo of your grandmother and write in the caption who is in it, where it was taken and roughly when; it is kept in your family’s own archive, and the note travels with it, so a grandchild opening it in forty years still knows. You choose who sees each post — everyone, your extended family or just your household. Start with twenty photos you actually care about; test photos make the whole thing feel pointless.
4. Invite your family
Kunbaa is invite-only — nobody can find or join your family space without an invite from you. Everyone you invite gets in free: the tree, the wall, chat, voice and video calls (one-to-one or a group of up to 4 free and up to 6 on Kunbaa Plus), events and Family Safety. Nobody else in your family ever needs a credit card. You choose each person’s access level as you invite them — see how to invite your family, and if you're setting it up for an older relative, there's a gentle guide for that too.
Where things live
The mobile app, coming soon to the App Store and Google Play, is where daily life happens: chat and the family groups, voice and video calls, and the optional Family Safety features. The website has the tree, the wall with the same choice of who sees each post, the photo library, events, member permissions and the two importers — a family-tree file from another program, or a WhatsApp group — and it’s where you manage the plan if you pay on kunbaa.com. If you want more room for the family archive, see plans, storage and billing.
A tip from families who've done this
Don't wait for everyone to post. Most of your family will mostly look, and that's fine — a family space needs three or four people adding things and everyone else receiving. You'll probably be one of the three. That's why you're reading this.